Moggle turns to Mab and tilts his head curiously, "What do mean by 'strange mists?' Tis common enough to those of us who dwell in the Brackenwold that we take for granted what must seem a bit strange to you, I've been to your Inworld once or twice, I recall how
fast your world was; everything zipping around in the sky, the constant motion of decay and life. Quite exhilirating. I'm guessing that you noticed we don't have such things here, but I'm guessing you noticed the way that the very firmament seems to breathe in and breathe out at equal intervals -- The mist that rose while we held our reverie and perhaps the only reliable way have of marking the passage of
time (I think that's what you mortals call it?) although it's really not the same thing here I suppose?" Moggle exits the tumbled down stone cottage with the shrine to An Cait Dubh and leaps up on to the plank road that bisects the marshy meadow and starts walking for Lankshorn.
You all walk for a couple of minutes and get close enough to begin making out the details of the village ahead: Perched on a gently rising mound that rises from the surrounding marsh, you see close-cramped, buildings of wildly different styles and construction -- some are thatched huts close to the ground, some are clapboard houses perched on tall stilts, and mixed in-between are dozens of yurts, tents, lean-tos, shanties and a even a crooked stone tower at the edge of town, topped with an irregularly built hut that looks like its about to slide off and crash into the ground below. Everything here looks dingy, muddy, and grim looking. The overall impression is one of squalor, misery and filth. numerous gangplanks, stairways and catwalks criss-cross the town at multiple levels, from the ground to as much as 30 feet in the air.
You close the last hundred yards or so to come to the end of the causeway, that passes beneath a ramshackle wooden tower. About 20 yards in front of you, a couple of "fellows" seem to be guarding the gate. One is a hulking brute about 8 feet tall and half-again as wide. His broad pink-green face is covered in sores and warts and a pair of impressive white tusks jut from his lower lip. His huge paunch nearly hangs to his knees and he stands with a sort of squatting posture on tree-trunk legs. His hand is resting on a massive iron-shod club that looks like it was once a small tree. He's naked save for a battered and dingy breastplate that barely seems capable of containing his bulk, and a filthy breech-clout that was probably white once, but is now heavily soiled and dirty yellow. In stark contrast, the other "man" next to him is short, lean, and sly looking. He has a corselet of scales, covered with a shabby looking leather coat. Puffy green sleeves slashed with red, and yellow pantaloons round out his mismatched outfit. His face is sallow green, and all angles and points: an impossibly long nose that looks like a diseased green carrot, nearly droops to his chin, and lank, greasy black hair that hangs to his shoulders, frames his face.